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Thursday, February 3, 2011

How to Change Your Lifestyle for Long Lasting Weight Loss

This is a guest post by Myln...

There are a lot of reasons why you’d want to lose weight - aside from the fact that it gives you a better appearance. Obesity and being overweight has been linked to a number of diseases such as diabetes and heart problems. I’m sure you want to lose weight, who doesn’t? The problem is dieting for a month is not enough. Once you’ve worked hard enough to lose weight, you’d have to work even harder to maintain it — and that’s quite difficult if you don’t incorporate it to your lifestyle. Once you’ve changed your lifestyle for long lasting weight loss, you’d notice that it’s actually easy — it’s not like you’re exerting any effort at all. To help you start out, here are some tips on how to do it. SET REALISTIC GOALS

Setting up goals too high for you will not help. A lot of people get overwhelmed at the idea of losing weight and they set goals too high even for a disciplined person to achieve. Remember that you are about to change your lifestyle and I don’t think eating fruits and vegetable every day for the rest of your life sounds appealing. To make it realistic enough, why don’t you make a schedule for your meals? You can probably make one day of the week a meat day, which sounds better than eating nothing but green salad.

DISCIPLINE YOURSELF

You won’t get too far without discipline. A lot of people fail in this category, so make sure to work hard on this. Disciplining yourself is hard, especially when you first start with it. The key is to stay away from temptation until you have full control of yourself. Say, don’t go to a party if you know that you can’t stay away from the food or go to the water fountain instead of paying the soda vending machine a visit.

GET A BUDDY

Losing weight has a lot of benefits, and it won’t hurt to make your family do the same. If you’re living alone with your spouse or with a boyfriend, bring him along and introduce him to weight loss. You can probably workout together or cook healthy food for each other. By doing this, you get to share the benefits of losing weight plus no one will tempt the other to eat sweets or drink sodas.

A DIET ALONE CANNOT HELP YOU LOSE WEIGHT

Some people may say and believe that a diet alone can make you lose weight. But I say otherwise. No matter how many restrictions you put in making your meal plans, it is never enough to make you achieve your desired weight. Here is the explanation why:

Dieting is the easiest method to lose weight and yet it is also the most neglected. When it comes to using food to lose excess weight, you are bound to count calories of every food and beverage you take in. Problem is, unless you have all the time in the world to measure your food by the book, you tend to just estimate your calorie count. This is a very common mistake as a little over your calorie requirement per day could eventually pile up into an overload of calories a week. Hence you need methods to lose those extra calories.

EXERCISE IS A HEALTHY HABIT

Exercise is the most effective complement for your diet plans. Not only does it give your body the best shape, it also takes care of those stray calories you get from not perfecting your calorie counting 101. Different kinds of weight loss exercises can be coupled with your diet. It can vary from the easiest to the hardest, or by doing things you love most like your favorite sport.

DO NOT OVERDO IT

From all those diet plans and exercise regimens that you force yourself to do every day, your body needs to have its deserved rest. Wearing your body out will not help you lose more weight. Instead, what you will lose is the energy to continue and strive harder. So along with your diet and exercise, put great importance on letting your body have a good night’s sleep every single night. A healthy body is one that functions well even at the most rigid time of the year like when you need to lose weight as soon as possible.